Smell of Sandalwood
by Meelu the Bold
Summary: In the night, ghosts seem to haunt with greater strength, don't they? GreilxElena. Spoilers.


"Elena, is that you?" Gawain said, a man in the grips of a hallucination.

In the dark of the room, he could not tell by sight, but by the sound of her hair sliding across her shoulders and the tempo and soft tap of her footsteps. He rose halfway to greet her, but her smell of sandalwood held him static and he waited that way for her to finish her night-time rituals in the pitch dark.

Although he could not see but her vague, familiar shape in the night, Gawain knew what she was doing. He heard the creak of the dresser drawer where she kept her special things like her brush, her perfume and her medallion. Gawain listened for the small chink of the glass stopper as she anointed the scent of sandalwood to her neck and her long nails against the skin of her neck as she rubbed it in.

Gawain relaxed and sank into the bed again when he heard the short drop of the glass bottle on the drawer bottom and the removal of her enamel brush. There was a click as she put the handle in her teeth and the light scrape of the drawer as she closed it and opened another. Her clothing whispered and fluttered as she removed it meticulously—she had once been a fine lady, with many clothes, but now she only had three good dresses for the daytime and slept naked. Her apron from her late night chores she folded first, and Gawain closed his eyes for all the good they were doing him as she tucked it and her dress and shift into the corner of their clothes drawer.

Her shoes she removed last, before the bed where he heard her slid them next to his boots, the soft padded soles hardly making any noise at all on the rug over their cold, stony floor. When Elena turned and sat down on the side of the bed that was empty for her to brush her hair and plait it for sleep, Gawain reached out to wrap his arms around her waist to tell her to wait until she wouldn't ruin it. She had never been there at all. Gawain curled his arm around nothing and bit at the pillow to silence his cry of anguish.

The night made his memory painful and keen. The clarity with which he remembered the last night with her was astonishing. He remembered the soft, sweet timbre of her voice as she sang to their children in the other room. Little Isaac, which was shortened to the pet name Ike by everyone except his own mother, and his toddling sister Mist, slept soundly that night. He could hear the two of them snoring, barely. Elena put her perfume on at night because she knew he liked the smell of it in her hair, but she did not sit on the bed to brush out her hair unless she too wanted something close and intimate. It wasn't as dark that night, there had been a moon through their window, albeit a small one. He could see the shimmer of blue in her hair and the white curve of her hips and breasts as she approached. She hadn't finished one brushstroke before his hands touched her and she set down the brush inside her shoe before embracing him slowly.

He kissed her face as he crawled over her. Gawain felt in his back a tired, comfortable ache that came with working all day. She ground her knuckles into the muscle there, trying not to scratch him with her sharp fingernails. Her hands were the only part of her noble life that she kept up, even if it caused her grief to. If he had asked, she would have cut them out of respect for the sacrifices he had made for her safety. The ascension of Ashnard, who surely knew of the Heron's dangerous gift, had forced them from their home in the city of Palma in Daein, as far south as they could go. He'd done battle with Caineghis to prove his worth as a mercenary and instructor, and lost—but not as badly as some, and the King was impressed by fortitude of Gawain and the courage of Elena, who had stood between the Lion's fangs and her husband with her infant son in her arms, whom she had just given birth to.

Their home here was small, and it was only a few days ago Gawain could remember discussing an additional room for the young maiden Mist would become with the builder he knew from town. Elena liked the climate here—she did not like the chill of Daeinish winters. Here, she said, the bones of the land were well dressed with green leaves and bright flowers and soft heat, and not bare and cold like they were in Palma or Nevassa. Gawain didn't have an ear or a care for poetry, but he listened when his wife spoke. He imagined that the art was something like her small voice, rather than the music of the words.

Elena made a tiny sound beneath him, the sound of a bird no bigger than his hand. She reached for his neck, to hold him close and touched his face lovingly. Gawain could imagine her fingers still if he concentrated, and her light voice moaning close in his ear. Now alone with the ghostly scent of sandalwood on his pillow and the small night-noises that a house and his own grieving imagination made, his mind was cruelly tricking him, tempting him to wake from his dark and slow nightmare. Even the touch of her body and the heat of her quick breath on his skin was only a thought, his own invention. But he remembered.

He remembered how her voice changed into a high, breathless whine when she was ready. Elena was hot inside and close; he never felt any closer to her than during this. To him it was natural. His childhood, his career, his entire life was physical and so then was his love. He wondered how she felt, how it was different—to be pierced rather than to pierce. Long ago he had decided that women, especially his wife, felt things more than normal and knew things more closely than men. It was something he intended to ask one day—but although they had shared many intimate things so far, Gawain had not yet found the courage to ask her his question outright. For now, he had thought, this was enough, to know her like this. Alone in the dark, he knew that was untrue. He could still feel her forget herself beneath him, clawing at his back like a creature.

She was small, especially compared to him, so it was not strange that he thought of her as a little fairy creature or a forest bird at times. Elena had a natural sixth sense that encouraged these thoughts. When, the next morning, they were awake and dressing—generally to the tempo of one of her favorite ballads—she did not stand higher than his chest. She appeared taller because of her posture and presence, but the difference was so significant he had trouble not thinking of it during these simple times, when it was simply apparent. Elena had not found the energy to plait her hair after their lovemaking and chided him playfully as she struggled against a knot the size of her fist. Gawain did not remember her words, but the trill of her voice as she said them and her bird-laughter after. Isaac, called Ike by everyone else, woke promptly and said his favorite word—bacon—over again until Elena agreed and made breakfast with three year old Mist in her arms.

His memory of her was not so good in the day, but he remembered the sounds she made in other rooms or when he had closed his eyes for a brief moment to think. He had not thought to remember or listen closely to the small talk she made—but he could recall the rise and fall of her shoulders and the shape of her body as she moved. When the Cat they trusted to watch over their children as they worked arrived at their door, Gawain found Elena slipping her precious medallion over her neck and beneath her clothes. She smiled at him and took his hand. It was she who bid Kinalf to put the two children down for their nap on time, asked after his brother in the army, and pressed a little copper coin into his palm as an advance payment.

She fussed over her shawl for a few moments outside before it was around her shoulders just perfectly and Gawain could still count how many times her elbow had touched his arm. Their home was not far out of the Bazaar District, where Elena worked in a small dried goods store with a friendly young Cat maiden that had made a strange Gallian rattling toy for their Ike out of a hard leather shell and some beans. The Gallian capital was the most racially tolerant city in the world, in Gawain's opinion—there was an ambassador from Crimea here, and since in these days the military served as a political arm, a very small party of knights, including his youngest student, seventeen-year-old Titania. Elena greeted their friends and neighbors as they passed with general hellos and smiles.

Elena picked up on city layouts quicker than Gawain did—after three years, she was the one who knew her way around everywhere the stony city. It was odd not to see a wooden building anywhere, but the heat and humidity did not allow for it, and the wood of the trees around them was only for decoration and smaller things like doors. Elena was drifting somewhat further ahead of him, so she could look at wares and talk to her many friends. The tall stairs she was now climbing were somewhat crowded.

They parted midway—he to the castle, where he would begin his classes and sessions. He bent down to kiss her forehead softly goodbye. She told him something about a lunch—to come home and eat with her.

He'd allowed himself to forget the events of the day. His classes seemed unimportant and typical to his memory, which skipped the parts where his wife did not play a part. Gawain recalled the pointed ears and smiles of his friends and the metal and claws of his students, the short red curls of Titania's hair on her back as she charged, basic movements of the sword, axe, lance and even the bow, with which he was so inefficient that benevolent Elena laughed at him when he tried. What had taken hours to develop over the course of a day was glossed over by his impatient memory in moments. Gawain knew he was doing these men an injustice, as it was he who later killed them.

The laws of Gallia were lenient enough to allow the presence of several elite mercenary parties—partially where Gawain had taken his idea. In plain terms, though, these 'parties' and 'organizations' were rarely anything less than a highly practiced assassin and their two or three disciples. At least twenty of those callous men had come for him and they, along with his neighbors and friends—the same ones that Elena greeted so cheerfully before—had been cut down without mercy or recognition.

He remembered pulling back the slatted screen of their door, the cool of the handle in his worn palm. Gawain could hear Elena's voice singing some old ballad originally from Begnion, but that everyone knew anyway. He called out something generic, I'm home, what are you doing, where are the children? She replied, cutting into her song by yelling across the house. At work a load of powdered mynoethi had tipped and fallen over her hair, turning it nearly all white. Both she and Sancha had to return home to wash it out, she was in the bath and if he wanted, she would wash his hair too. The children had been taken to Kinalf's home, where his mother, who was almost blind, could dote on them like the nearly grown Kinalf would not let her.

He refused. He remembered that much. Kindly, of course, but he was just going back afterward to the castle to coat himself in sweat and grime again and it would be better and more practical to wait. And then Elena said,

"Alright, but could you bring me my clothes?"

And he said, "Of course."

Women's clothes were strange things, since although what his wife wore looked simple enough, there was always a little more that what met the eye. Hers were only just drying on the line they strung in range of the window's sunlight. Honestly, he could not be sure what was necessary. Some things were completely unnecessary, like her favorite shawl or circlet. Like everything she touched, it smelled like her characteristic sandalwood perfume.

On the table there was a small white garment that looked somewhat like Elena's shift, which since was worn under her clothes, as he recalled, would have escaped the mynoethi. She would need it. When he reached for it, there was something hard and metal beneath the soft, airy fabric and he brushed the shift aside to see what that was.

Before that day, Gawain had never known the medallion to be dangerous. He had not realized that only Elena and his daughter, Mist, were the only beings ever to touch it, or if he had, he had not realized why. The Heron had not told Elena this—or if she had, Elena had never told him.

His arm almost shattered when he touched the hot bronze, but it didn't. When he took it in his hand it was heavy and scorching. Gawain's sword arm twitched violently and drew the blade from its sheath so that he could in turn shatter the door.

"Gawain!" he heard a woman's voice cry. Not now, he remembered thinking.

A passing friend died on his blade. His stroke was so skilled that none of the blood fell upon him—and in fact the corpse remained standing many seconds after. He saw a woman run into her house, seized her by the hair and dashed her skull on the concave flagstone street. Her scream had not yet died when his blade gutted a child and his companion. Gawain walked at a slow and unhurried pace. When a neighbor charged with claws bared, he simply received the attack with the edge of his sword and slit his attacker's belly with one fluid motion.

It was natural.

The Crimean knights came after him. They did not last long. Their visors, armor and very weapons betrayed them—Gawain knew their secrets and their patterns. He knew how to counter their swipes and thrusts and then easily murder them. Then the assassin came and nothing changed.

The knives shone bright first. One caught him in the arm, which he pulled out by the handle and threw back to its owner—the man caught it with the back of his skull. The archers rained down on him—or tried. Nothing worked. He was too much in his element. The archers called a ceasefire, for all the good it would do them. He lashed out to kill one when he—or rather the medallion—felt it, the Heron.

There had been one like this before, Gawain thought, although the thought was unfamiliar. Better murder it before it becomes a danger.

But he felt a strange desire for the presence of such purity. It was not enough simply to murder such a beautiful thing, but to whittle it down, like a child too young and unskilled to know that anything could come of the woodblock other than the pleasure of taking it apart. Perhaps if it had held still—but it did not. It ran towards him recklessly—she ran towards him. Now, he thought. He could hear her panting with fear and exertion, his hearing magnified many times so that she sounded as close to him as his own ear.

Gawain lifted his sword to gouge her on it and as she was impaled, he felt a sudden and immense elation. The feeling and the sound of her voice as she gasped in shock was more satisfying than anything he had ever known. Elena made a sound like a small, wounded bird, and he felt that he knew that sound more intimately than any other. The blade entered her belly low, a great distance from her heart and Gawain knew no greater pleasure than to watch her die there. Elena, however, would not lose her wits and simply fall with the others.

She continued to live, reaching for his hand, where gently she removed the white-hot emblem. He could feel her fingernails softly scratch his palm and then he slid his sword from where it was encased in her body, clearly horrified. She smiled and mouthed her goodbye, for her throat was clogged with her blood, the blood that had not yet found its way to the street. When she fell, Gawain fell with her. He laughed, but that laugh turned into a shapeless roar as he held her body close to him and drenched himself with her blood. While her corpse was still warm and life-like, her long fingernails only traced the flagstones of the street.

It was only within the Gallian prison hours later when Titania and King Gallia himself appeared with a wash basin and accoutrements that he could be persuaded to rinse himself of the scent of sandalwood in favor of expedient and immediate escape. Beorc, after that night, were no longer welcome and he faced certain execution if he were to stay. Caineghis was risking much by allowing Titania to aid him, allowing him to escape justice and live.

After that, though, he was not sure if he even wanted to live. Before, he had not understood what would make a man hang himself. Now, he knew that as intimately as he had known Elena, perhaps even more so. Ike had not understood properly, but Mist had not even known. Had it been worse for her? Especially since she had inherited her mother's sixth sense, her extra knowing and feeling? It seemed magic to him that she knew her mother's special song by heart despite her incredible youth.

It was his children that he could not leave. To assuage his guilt and fears, Greil took a knife to his swordarm and money to an assassin. And of course it was not enough. He remembered the revulsion and pain he felt, taking his arm apart so that it would never heal. Explaining his actions, his wife's death, even to that callous man . . . the only thing that overpowered his shame and grief and guilt now, though, was the inexorable longing for her. There were nights he could not sleep for want of her. At this, his shame and grief multiplied—but always the desire remained the stronger. All he had now was the smell of sandalwood and the memory of her nails on his back.

The door opened and Greil did not flinch. The light was only dim sunrise from outside—there were no windows in his bedroom.

"Father?" Ike ventured. Greil could see that he was fully dressed and ready for training. "You're late for practice."

"So I am," Greil replied, rousing from sleeplessness. "Forgive me, I'm old."

Ike snorted. "And I'm the king of Crimea."

"Respect your father's words, boy," Greil threatened. "I'm going to beat your head in so well Mist will use it for a bowl."

"Hah!"

Ike was down the hall in an instant. Greil counted to three before he heard the satisfactory yelp of his son and surprised oath of a much abused, hung-over Shinon sleeping in the hall since Gatrie locked their room at night. He stood up and before dressing, opened the bottom drawer of a small chest to examine the little empty vial that still smelled vaguely of his wife.


End file.
